The Fall of the House of Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  They followed him counterclockwise around the great stump of the basalt throne, massive and inspiring of awe even when vacated. Even Cabal felt his spirits depressed in its presence. The last time he had seen it, it was occupied, and the occupant had not been friendly. Some ghost of that animosity hung around and coloured his thoughts a morose shade of dark blue stabbed through with arterial red.

  He was not displeased that Ratuth Slabuth did not pause to offer a guided tour, but instead brought them smartly to a broad crevasse some ten yards wide at the rear of the throne’s base. The crevasse gave out into a rough tunnel and, from somewhere out of sight beyond the twists in the path, a milky glow dimly emanated. Though the lava had long since solidified, there was still a steady warmth emanating from the frozen lake. Despite this, the breeze that blew up from the place beneath was chilly and, in some way Cabal could not quantify, disturbing. It smelled of bad decisions and unforeseen eventualities. He did not care for it at all.

  ‘This is it, then?’ he asked of Ratuth Slabuth, or Satan.

  ‘It is, indeed, yes.’ Satan seemed enormously pleased with the outing. Cabal half expected him to reach into some intra-dimensional space in his ribs and produce a picnic hamper.

  Cabal looked down into the tunnel. ‘The Ivory Citadel is just down there?’

  ‘It is, yes. Your fate awaits you, Johannes. I do so hope that you enjoy it.’

  Cabal did not truly understand how it was that he finally understood, but there was a pressing certainty that had grown so heavily upon him as they had made their way there, it rendered him soul-weary and saddened.

  ‘It isn’t really the next step in our journey at all, is it?’

  ‘Ah, now, then.’ Satan looked up at the roughly hewn vault of the great audience chamber as he weighed his words. ‘Yes, and no. It’s not exactly what you wanted, but it’s certainly the next step. Indeed, it is the last step.’ He shook his head in a slow mockery of sadness. ‘Alas.’

  ‘The Ivory Citadel doesn’t exist.’ Cabal looked at the horde of demons arranged in a loose arc around them, hedging them in and preventing any easy escape. At ground level, at least, but if one’s party included somebody who was very good at running up walls …

  He slid a glance at Zarenyia to prime her to be ready to act. She, however, was looking the other way. His glance turned into more of a glare, but still she seemed to be finding all sorts of things interesting with the sole exception of the imminent emergency at hand. Cabal would like to have hissed or gently side-kicked one her legs to draw her attention, but there was Satan, beaming at him with awful unctuousness.

  ‘Doesn’t exist? Of course it exists!’ Satan laughed at the wonderful joke he was playing. ‘I was entirely honest about it … up to a point. The point being that the citadel leads anywhere. Rather, it specifically leads nowhere. There is nothing within those pale walls but the final death, the utter extinction, the snuffing out of every vital essence.’

  Cabal swallowed. ‘The final death is a myth. Something always survives. Even when Madam Zarenyia here devours a soul, there are leavings.’ He looked urgently at her, hoping that by mentioning her name he would finally attract her attention. But no, she was still finding her sudden interest in diabolical vulcanology supremely absorbing. With a growing sense that he had been handily outmanoeuvred, he plunged on. ‘There is always something left. The soul is a very resilient thing.’

  ‘So it is, it takes a great deal to destroy every last little peck of one. And, guess what, Johannes? The Ivory Citadel is just the place to make it happen.’

  ‘You’re going to kill us? Just like that?’ Miss Smith was understandably upset at the revelation. ‘I’m not even properly alive and you’re going to kill me?’

  Satan seesawed his head from side to side while he considered. ‘Your destruction isn’t vital, but really, my dear, you are such an aberration. I cannot help but think that the cosmos would be a tidier place without you. So, yes. You’re going to die. Permanently. Sorry.’

  ‘Madam Zarenyia,’ said Cabal in a taut undertone. ‘I think we should be making a sharp exit at about this time.’

  She seemed to ignore him yet again, but this time she turned, her legs cascading back and forth as she did so until she was facing the tunnel. ‘Yes, darling.’ Her voice was strange and faraway, as if she was thinking of something else entirely. ‘I think you should. Run along now, you and Miss Smith.’

  Cabal looked around. It wasn’t immediately obvious where exactly they should run; the cordon of demons was tight and unbroken. He looked up at Zarenyia and saw she was looking him in the eye, and her face was sad. She nodded towards the tunnel. ‘Off you pop, Johannes, there’s a dear. Take Miss Smith with you, and good luck.’

  Perhaps Hell is seismically active, for Cabal felt the ground shift beneath his feet, or perhaps he didn’t. His legs grew weak. His stomach squirmed. ‘Madam Zarenyia, you can’t mean…’

  ‘Her Highness, the Princess Zarenyia.’ Satan unfolded his Jacob’s ladder of a body and grew huge and hateful. The horse’s skull leered down from beneath the glimmering Roman helmet, reflecting a dim orange glow as the lake around them grew hotter and hotter. ‘Show a little respect, Cabal. You are in the presence of royalty.’

  ‘Zarenyia, please…’ Cabal realised that for the first time he was honestly, truly pleading for his life. All the times he had not deigned to do so, because of all those other times he had gone into danger with contingency plans already in place or he had seen a flaw in the deathtrap, an oversight in the ambush. This was the first time the noose was around his neck, and the contingency plan was drawing it tight. He searched for something, anything that might bring her back to his side.

  ‘You … you dibbed.’

  ‘Her Highness’s promise was not to hurt you, I understand?’ said Satan. ‘Well, she shan’t. The citadel needs no help to do its work. Or, of course, you could try to make a run for it here. I would be fascinated to see how many steps you manage. Just think, Cabal, it was in this very chamber that you humiliated me. And now this happens.’ Beyond the demons, the surface of the lake cracked and lava slipped through, the solid surface breaking up as ice floes do in the arctic spring. Satan looked around with palpable satisfaction. ‘Now I shall have good memories of the place. Quite cosy, actually. I may move my court here. Tradition is a fine thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hurry along, Johannes,’ said Zarenyia. Her smile was false and her eyes tortured. ‘Go on. Don’t want to keep the old Ivory Citadel waiting now, do you?’ Her synthetic gaiety cracked in her throat.

  ‘We trusted you,’ said Miss Smith. She pointed at Cabal. ‘He trusted you, and he doesn’t trust anyone. How could you?’

  ‘Ha ha ha ha, foolish mortal.’ They were just words drawn from a penny dreadful, as impersonal as a motto in a Christmas cracker. Zarenyia’s eyes darted to the tunnel. ‘Go meet your fate. Go on!’

  Her eyes met Cabal’s, and he understood. ‘Very well,’ he said quietly. He turned to face Satan. ‘You win, Ragtag Slyboots.’

  ‘Must you call me that? It seems very petty at this juncture.’

  ‘It’s your true name. Before all your airs and graces. Call yourself Ratuth Slabuth or even Satan, but you’re still the same milk-souring non-entity you ever were beneath it all. You have been lucky, not clever. At least I shall finally be shot of you. Yes, you win. Congratulations.’ He held out his arm to Miss Smith. ‘Shall we? Our fate is sealed. We may at least go to it with dignity.’

  Miss Smith removed her crown and tossed it at Zarenyia’s feet. ‘You’ll need to look the part, princess,’ she said. Then she took Cabal’s proffered arm and, like a couple promenading in the park on a Sunday afternoon, they entered the tunnel.

  Zarenyia said nothing, but she took up the crown as if it were precious to her, and carefully donned it.

  Satan watched them go with enormous satisfaction, soured only by a lack of polite grovelling on Cabal’s part. That would have been enjoyable, but one cannot have everythi
ng. Still, at least he had the pleasure of watching the infuriating mortal go to his oh-so-richly-deserved final deserts. Miss Smith was blameless in the affair, but Satan being Satan, collateral damage was a perk rather than a liability. There they went, disappearing into shadows, betrayed and doomed. Lovely. And here was his new Princess of Hell, watching them go. She could have cackled a bit more as she rubbed Cabal’s nose in it and generally enjoyed her act of wickedness more demonstratively, but that would come in time, he was sure. Perhaps he should run a course on the correct deportment of senior demons.

  Indeed, Princess Zarenyia was watching them go with no apparent emotion at all. That would never do. Demons are built of passion, after all. She should be showing something. Satan turned his full attention upon her, and felt for the first time a slowly wiggling qualm in his consciousness. Something was not right here.

  ‘Your Highness.’ His voice was low with suspicion. ‘We should be going. I shall order that the tunnel be sealed permanently.’

  Then Zarenyia turned to him, looked him in the eye sockets with an insouciant smile, and said, ‘You do that, poppet.’

  Suspicion crystallised into certainty. He growled with sudden anger. ‘What have you done?’

  Out in the lava lake, the last floating stone floe rolled and sank beneath the glowing surface.

  ‘Me? Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Just done a betrayal, like you said I should.’

  ‘What are you saying, devil? That you have betrayed me?’

  The lava started to glow a cherry pink, and the heat in the chamber became stifling as Hell itself responded in kind to Satan’s growing fury.

  ‘Only sort of, darling.’ The smile remained broad, but her eyes narrowed. ‘You might call it a sin of omission.’

  * * *

  Miss Smith was disgruntled by the speed with which Johannes Cabal sought annihilation. As soon as a twist in the tunnel hid them from the view of the collected demons, he had quickened his gait from a sober ‘man walking to the gallows’ pace to a ‘if we don’t get a move on, we shall miss our train’ semi-trot.

  ‘I am not so very keen to see the Ivory Citadel, Cabal. If you want to rush off there, be my guest, but I plan to take my time.’

  For his reply, Cabal pulled her down behind a boulder. For her reply, she belaboured him with her parasol. ‘I am very much not in the mood,’ she said as she rained blows upon his head and shoulders. ‘You should have asked earlier. Nicely. Over dinner.’

  ‘Madam.’ Cabal sounded pained, if not necessarily physically. ‘You may belabour me with your parasol later at your leisure. At this instant, however, I would appreciate it if you desist.’

  Miss Smith desisted. ‘Then why are we hiding behind a boulder? You heard that house of cards with the skull and a hat; they’re going to seal off the tunnel. There’s no going back.’

  Ruminating upon just how much of his life seemed to consist of explaining to women why they were hiding behind things, Cabal reached into his jacket and drew the little Senzan pistol from its holster. ‘Do you know how to use a gun?’

  She accepted the weapon with distrust. ‘Of course I don’t. I’m a witch these days. It’s all wands and fell powers.’

  ‘I am not sure your “fell powers” will work in this environment, but I am confident bullets will. They are of my own design and will have some effect even upon demons. They may not kill demons, but I guarantee it will be very upsetting to them, all the same. The device is simple; release the safety catch thus, aim along the top of the weapon much like pointing, squeeze the trigger. Repeat until some sort of resolution occurs.’

  Miss Smith glanced dubiously at him. ‘And while I’m irritating demons, what will you be doing?’

  ‘Irritating them alongside you.’ He opened his Gladstone bag and withdrew from its depths the bulky form of a Webley .577 revolver.

  Her dubious expression darkened. ‘Why do I get the girly little gun?’

  He handed her the revolver. She weighed it against the semi-automatic for a moment and then handed the Webley back. ‘Unwieldy, isn’t it? Very well, so you have your artillery piece and I have my bijou little demon-botherer. Is there a plan, or is this just a tantrum that involves firearms?’

  ‘To be candid, I do not know for a certainty. The plan, if it exists, is not mine.’

  ‘Then whose?’ Miss Smith popped her head up to peer over the boulder and up the tunnel. ‘Zarenyia? Didn’t she just betray us?’

  ‘I do not know that, either. It certainly looked like a betrayal. I suspect not of us, however.’

  * * *

  Satan, previously Ratuth Slabuth, née Ragtag Slyboots, was prone to a certain footling administrative wiliness that, in a poor light, might be construed for cunning. He liked to flatter himself that his coup had been a masterpiece of patient scheming and that his was the triumph of that quiet man, but the truth was he had been lucky. He lacked for the killing instinct that had promoted the previous Satan’s cabinet of princes and generals to positions of power, but his own position with that group had always been that of a reliable factotum, not of a trusted confidante. When he had been given a simple task of elementary perfidiousness to perform, he had failed in it and been demoted to the non-commissioned ranks for it. He had hated Cabal for the humiliation, but then it is the habit of small men—and demons—to blame others for their failings.

  These failings were multitudinous, and it truly was only a matter of time (and little time at that) before some imp or minor devilkin with an ounce of nous overturned the order once more. One such failing was a general heedlessness, an incipient lack of sagacity that coloured, or rather failed to colour, his every action. If there was a princedom available for complacency, Ratuth Slabuth would surely have risen to it long ago.

  In this particular case he had failed to do what Zarenyia had been doing whenever she had a moment since learning that this Hell was indeed the Hell; she had been testing the bounds of its reality. It struck her as reasonable that, since the Five Ways had brought them there via an entrance woven at the continuum of its reality and what we may laughingly call our own reality, that it would also provide an exit when necessary. She had not been able to detect it, only tasting the decaying weft that briefly connected Hell to the endless cemetery and was now too fragile to return across.

  Then, as this penny-ante Satan she so roundly loathed had smugly laid out his silly master plan to destroy Cabal utterly, she had felt the glimmering formation of the hoped-for exit. It had come from Satan’s mouth, born on glowing threads of eventuality and recourse; it had risen from the plan of Lucifer’s tower that he showed her; it had grown in the air like the scent of nearby water. The Ivory Citadel. Perhaps most of the time it was indeed the home to the final death, but—for a short engagement only—its place would be taken by the path through the Five Ways.

  So she had played along, she had fooled Satan, and the most depressing part of it all was that it had been so easy. He really wasn’t up to the job.

  ‘You’re really not up to this job, are you?’ Zarenyia laughed. She would be destroyed soon, she knew, but better this than rotting of boredom in a palace, burdened by a meaningless title bestowed by a fool. She nodded at the encroaching crescent of demons. ‘You can do much better than this idiot, you know. I am only amazed that he’s lasted this long. Any of you could do a better job. Well, not you exactly, darling—sorry to raise your hopes.’ A demon with the face of a rhinoceros, the intellect of a rhinoceros, and the ego of a shy virgin, stood crushed. ‘But the rest of you with a few wits about you. You would make a far better Satan.’ She nodded directly at one of them illustratively as she spoke, a thing like a wilful rag doll made from spite and gingham that, incidentally, smelled of aniseed. Zarenyia’s attention moved on, so she did not see the diminutive demon nod slowly. Mimble Scummyskirts liked the sound of that.

  Ratuth Slabuth—he truly did not deserve the title of Satan—withdrew his own senses. He had felt the edge of his domain where it tended into the dreadful nega
tive of the Ivory Citadel fade into something else. The Five Ways. It could only be the Five Ways.

  ‘Why?’ he roared, his anger raising the inferno about them. The lava bubbled. ‘I offered you everything! Why would you throw everything away for that … that shit, Cabal?’

  ‘Language, sweetheart. And, here’s a pointer for the future, should you have one. Tempting people involves offering them something that they actually want. I never really knew what I wanted, you see. I thought I would be happy with adventures and murder, and in no way am I deprecating them—adventures and murder are super fun. But I found something else. My funny little friend. I know humans live so briefly, and it should not concern me when that span is shortened further still. But you, Ragtag Slyboots … I was not about to betray my friend, my only friend, for the likes of you. So.’ She smiled brightly, but her eyes were sad, her remaining time brief. ‘Why don’t you take your palace and your pretty pink princess tiara, and stick them up your non-Euclidean arse?’

  She turned and fled.

  * * *

  Zarenyia had little enough of a plan, and what she had consisted of ‘Fight until they kill me; give Johannes and the chippy little thing with the parasol time to escape.’ It was elegant in its simplicity, and modest in its aims, unburdened as it was with anything approaching an exit strategy. She would fight in the tunnel to limit the number of challengers who might engage her at once, and she was fairly confident that she would last a few minutes at least. She would also have the tactical advantage of experience; she did a lot of hunting in the tunnels of the outer darkness—mainly of demons who had become lost at the furthest marches of Hell—and had a few tricks up her angora sleeves.

  Her rapid retreat had caught Ratuth Slabuth—she really couldn’t think of that nincompoop as Satan a second longer—on the hop, but now she heard him roaring orders that substituted bluster for authority. If nothing else, she thought she might have fatally undermined His Satanship. It would have happened sooner or later in any case, but now she felt sure it would happen a great deal sooner. If Satan couldn’t be relied upon to successfully deal with a couple of mortals, really, what was he good for?